When Ryan Bertrand took aim from distance and watched the bounce of his shot deceive the Malta goalkeeper to find the net, the England defender had to feel a surge of elation. It was September 2017 and he had made it 2-0 on 85 minutes in the World Cup qualifier at the Ta’ Qali National Stadium.
Bertrand, then at Southampton, had never previously scored for England at any level. He would not do so again. And yet he did not celebrate. It would have been inappropriate given the prevailing mood among the 3,700 travelling fans. Bertrand simply pulled up his shirt and mopped the sweat from his brow.
It was a defining on-field image but, really, the most memorable ones came from the visiting enclosure, England’s addition of two stoppage-time goals for a 4-0 win almost irrelevant. By then, about two-thirds of the England support had sloped off in search of spirit-lifting refreshment, some having first taken down their flags from the perimeter fencing, which was quite the sight. It was one of those toxic nights and there is little doubt that it frames England’s return to the stadium for Friday night’s Euro 2024 qualifier – if only to serve as a barometer of the progress under Gareth Southgate.
England have travelled with a sense of assurance and purpose, tranquillity, too, which tends to be the case these days, Southgate further boosted by the presence of five newly minted Manchester City treble winners. Has Jack Grealish sobered up yet? When that is one of the talking points, you get the picture. Good news for Grealish: the four-day Abode on the Rock dance music festival got started on Thursday afternoon.
Back in 2017, Southgate had looked enviously at Spain. “How can we possibly compare ourselves to a team who have Champions League winners throughout?” he asked. It is all change now, his squad also featuring a Europa Conference League-winning captain in West Ham’s Declan Rice.
“It is a massive positive,” Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United striker, said this week. “We have got players that have experienced massive occasions and it is only going to help us as a nation to hopefully get over the line in a major tournament.”
Rashford’s presence is a thing, given the scrutiny around his non-tournament involvement with England. When he withdrew from the squad for the opening Euro qualifiers against Italy and Ukraine in March, which England won, it was the fifth time he had done so since September 2020.
Rashford cannot help it if he is injured and Southgate has lost Lewis Dunk and Jude Bellingham from his original squad to fitness issues. But the rest are here and it is worth saying that the trip to face the world’s 172nd-ranked nation comes nearly three weeks after the end of the Premier League season. England will complete the seemingly eternal campaign against North Macedonia at Old Trafford on Monday.
Back again to Malta 2017 and, as Southgate confronted the disconnect between the team and the fanbase, he admitted that in his day as an England international, there were players who “ducked” call-ups. It was because the environment was all wrong, the shirt heavy, and Southgate was acutely aware that there remained a body of work ahead.
Malta was a turning point: surely one of the twin lows of Southgate’s tenure. The other was the 4-0 Nations League defeat against Hungary last June when the crowd at Molineux turned on him savagely.
At the Ta’ Qali Stadium, Southgate’s lineup featured his stalwarts – Kyle Walker, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane, with John Stones and Rashford on the bench – and it was a listless performance until the late flurry. “Hallelujah,” Clive Tyldesley said in commentary when Kane opened the scoring in the 53rd minute.
There were boos from the England end for a misplaced pass before half-time, exaggerated cheers for a shot on target. “We’re fucking shit,” was the song. Progress had been slow from Southgate’s first game in charge – the 2-0 Wembley win over Malta in October 2016 – and there would be no immediate uplift. Remember the paper-plane throwing and apathy of October 2017 during the victory over Slovenia at Wembley that secured World Cup qualification?
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Southgate did not want to address the problems between the squad and supporters in the immediate aftermath of Malta away. But he certainly did two days later, wondering whether the players’ wealth was a part of it and drilling down with particular intensity on to the notion that they did not care.
More often than not, Southgate said, they had cared too much. “They’ve been wrapped up in the experience too much,” he said. “They’ve not been able to give their best for that reason.” Southgate called for a fresh start, for support, and doubled down on his push for a cultural reset, to bring the squad closer to the fans, to close the divide. He looked to American sport and how they were more open with the media, helping to break down barriers.
Lift-off would come at the 2018 World Cup with the run to the semi-finals and that was when the playwright James Graham started to feel that something extraordinary was happening, a shift in the national mood driven by the national team.
Graham has chronicled it in his new play, Dear England, which opened at the National Theatre on Sunday, Joseph Fiennes the blockbuster choice to play Southgate. It is most assuredly a moment for football. And one that felt a long way away when Bertrand saw his shot go in.
